A book new readers will want to take a peek at.
A day in the life of a squirrel for new readers.
Striking photographs of a gray squirrel are paired with short, declarative sentences in the first person that describe the actions each picture depicts. “I can run” is the first line, and it appears on verso opposite a recto photo of the squirrel, its body stretched into a taut horizontal form moving from left to right with the page turn. Ensuing spreads depict the squirrel hopping, sitting, jumping (quite spectacularly), and so on. Then, two spreads are devoted to the squirrel hiding after a hawk tries to catch it. The drama in this sequence rivals that captured by Nic Bishop in Joy Cowley’s Red-Eyed Tree Frog (1999). Never fear: the squirrel ends the book safe and sound, the final spread showing the barely visible squirrel face poking up and out of a hole in a burl. “I can peek” reads the accompanying text. Although the photography is crisp and clear, pages that depict the squirrel in a tree demonstrate perhaps too well how squirrel camouflage works—there is so little contrast between squirrel body and tree that it is a little hard to see.
A book new readers will want to take a peek at. (Early reader. 5-7)Pub Date: Aug. 15, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-8234-3831-0
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Holiday House
Review Posted Online: May 30, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2017
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Hee haw.
The print version of a knee-slapping cumulative ditty.
In the song, Smith meets a donkey on the road. It is three-legged, and so a “wonky donkey” that, on further examination, has but one eye and so is a “winky wonky donkey” with a taste for country music and therefore a “honky-tonky winky wonky donkey,” and so on to a final characterization as a “spunky hanky-panky cranky stinky-dinky lanky honky-tonky winky wonky donkey.” A free musical recording (of this version, anyway—the author’s website hints at an adults-only version of the song) is available from the publisher and elsewhere online. Even though the book has no included soundtrack, the sly, high-spirited, eye patch–sporting donkey that grins, winks, farts, and clumps its way through the song on a prosthetic metal hoof in Cowley’s informal watercolors supplies comical visual flourishes for the silly wordplay. Look for ready guffaws from young audiences, whether read or sung, though those attuned to disability stereotypes may find themselves wincing instead or as well.
Hee haw. (Picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: May 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-545-26124-1
Page Count: 26
Publisher: Scholastic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 28, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor
Having surveyed worms, spiders, flies, and head lice, Gravel continues her Disgusting Critters series with a quick hop through toad fact and fancy.
The facts are briefly presented in a hand-lettered–style typeface frequently interrupted by visually emphatic interjections (“TOXIN,” “PREY,” “EWWW!”). These are, as usual, paired to simply drawn cartoons with comments and punch lines in dialogue balloons. After casting glances at the common South American ancestor of frogs and toads, and at such exotic species as the Emei mustache toad (“Hey ladies!”), Gravel focuses on the common toad, Bufo bufo. Using feminine pronouns throughout, she describes diet and egg-laying, defense mechanisms, “warts,” development from tadpole to adult, and of course how toads shed and eat their skins. Noting that global warming and habitat destruction have rendered some species endangered or extinct, she closes with a plea and, harking back to those South American origins, an image of an outsized toad, arm in arm with a dark-skinned lad (in a track suit), waving goodbye: “Hasta la vista!”
A light dose of natural history, with occasional “EWWW!” for flavor . (Informational picture book. 5-7)Pub Date: July 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-77049-667-5
Page Count: 32
Publisher: Tundra Books
Review Posted Online: April 12, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2016
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